Chapter Three Summary

This chapter establishes Dom Francisco's background. He is born in the northeastern part of Brazil in 1785 and his father dies in a ranching accident when Francisco Manoel is one. He lives in a bare, three-bedroom hut with his bad-tempered mother and an Indian half-breed she quickly takes up with called Manuelzinho who kills snakes and sells their flesh for a living. Francisco's mother is content with Manuelzinho but he keeps wandering away after about a week at home.

Decades later, chained in the King of Dahomey's prison, Francisco remembers the year of the drought, when he is seven. The few animals the family had died, fires raged across the landscape, rats bit the boy as he slept and rattlesnakes came into the yard looking for food. Manuelzinho returns and digs deeply to find a trickle of brackish water, but the boy's...